Wei LAB Director Jerlando Jackson contributed two articles to The Chronicle of Higher Education in 2019.
The first, titled “To Chair or Not to Chair?”, was featured in March 2019 in the Advice section. In it, he recalled his own deliberation process that led to him becoming the chair to the Education Leadership and Policy Analysis department at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Education.
“The process is both introspective and long-range,” Dr. Jackson said in the article, “requiring you to consider how your skill set and your career trajectory align with the chair’s role.”
Dr. Jackson was in his 19th year at the time he was approached with the prospect of becoming chair. Alongside advancing projects for the Wei LAB, Dr. Jackson talked about his other commitments and how an appointment to chair could change those commitments. He also discussed the external circumstances, such as working with his colleagues as a chair, completing tasks that only chairs handle, and how his work style would fit to a new position with new responsibilities. He provided seven criteria to help other faculty members faced with their own “to chair or not to chair” conundrum.
In January 2019, Dr. Jackson contributed an article titled “How to Keep Faculty Searches on Track.” In it, Dr. Jackson recalled his own experience when being recruited by the University of Wisconsin-Madison to begin the article. He also gave advice on how to recruit professionally and thoughtfully to conclude it.
Dr. Jackson was joined by six other members of academia who gave their respective advice on the importance of the hiring process and how to remove factors such as implicit and explicit biases.
“Hiring,” he said, “is one of the most important things we do as an institution and take the least amount of time ensuring it’s done well.”